VERNON BRANDER left his brother’s house that evening in a frenzy of doubt and uncertainty, such as his passionate, self-torturing nature was liable to. He had so long been bound in a dutiful and chivalrous vassalage to his sister-in-law, seeing her faults without being repelled by them, and in all things doing her reverent homage as to his early ideal, that it came upon him with a shock to discover suddenly, as he had done this evening, that she had fallen from that high place in her imagination. He tried in vain to hide from himself the fact that this change in his feelings was due to the appearance on the scene of a rival who was carrying away all before her. Mrs. Brander had, on previous occasions, scoffed at his adoration of children; she had often shown clearly how little she cared for his feelings; but never before to-night had she seemed to him cold, and hard, and selfish; never before had it occurred to him to think how lacking she was in feminine softness and charm.
Following on this discovery came the inevitable consciousness who it was that had brought about this knowledge. If he had not looked lately into a softer pair of eyes, if he had not felt the touch of a warmer hand, if, in short, he had never met Olivia Denison, he would have gone on comfortably in his platonic worship of the only woman of his acquaintance who had any of those elements of beauty and grace which were necessary to his somewhat fastidious standard. But the advent of the beautiful, warm-hearted, impulsive young girl had changed all that; and Vernon, as he remembered the promises he had made to his brother and his brother’s wife, and recognized clearly enough that by the circumstances of his life he was bound to remain in bachelor loneliness, felt that the burden of a bygone sin was heavier upon him than he could bear.
He was going gloomily down the hill, and had nearly reached the foot of it, when a rather rough voice, with an inflection which was un-English and strange, addressed him quite close to his ear.
“Could you oblige me with a light?”
Vernon, who had his pipe between his lips, stopped, and offered the stranger his matchbox. The night was dark, but he was able to recognize in this abrupt-mannered person the man he and Meredith had seen that evening leaning on the garden wall of the cottage adjoining the Vicarage. There had been something suspicious about the stranger’s manner then; there was something more now. He took the proffered matchbox, struck a light, and, instead of applying it to the cigar he had ready in his mouth, held it close enough to Vernon’s face to get a good view of every feature.
The clergyman, returning his gaze, grew deadly pale. He did not flinch, however, but settling his face with the hard determination of a man accustomed to bear pain, submitted to the scrutiny in dogged silence.
“Thank you,” said the stranger slowly, as he threw away the match, which had burnt down, and struck another, with which he proceeded to light his cigar. “You are the first person about here who has shown what in other parts we should call common civility. A rough lot, these Yorkshiremen!”
“And they don’t always improve much in manners by going abroad,” said Vernon, quietly.
The other remained silent for a moment, peering at him in the darkness. Then he spoke again, more courteously than before.
“You take me for a Yorkshireman, then?”
“Yes; I can hear the Yorkshire burr through some accent you have picked up since.”
“Well, you’re a smart chap for a parson,” said the other, approvingly. “You’ll excuse my frankness; but I’m a plain man, and I dare say my manners are none the more polished for fifteen years spent among cattle-drovers. They’re not the sort of company to make one fit for Buckingham Palace.”
“I suppose not,” said Vernon. “And you have said good-bye to them, and come back to settle down in your native county?”
“For a little while—a year, or maybe two,” answered the stranger with great deliberateness. “I haven’t come over here to sit still and twiddle my thumbs for the rest of my life.”
“Why, there’s plenty of work to be done here in the old country.”
“Yes, it’s work brings me over here, and hard work too, by what I hear,” said the other, looking penetratingly at the clergyman through shrewd, half-shut eyes.
He gave the impression of being able to see in the dark as well as any owl, and Vernon felt that he himself was still being subjected to the same keen inspection which had been begun by the light of the match. He, on his side, could see enough of the stranger’s appearance to feel curiously interested in him. This abrupt and somewhat uncouth person was a man whose age was difficult to guess. That he was still in the vigor and prime of life was evident, but it was not so certain whether the rugged furrows in his face, and a certain deliberateness of speech and action, were signs of approaching middle age, or the result of heavy responsibilities and hard work begun early in life. The lower part of his face was covered and much concealed by a short beard of a fashion long grown obsolete in England; he was dressed with that sort of solid respectability which disregards expense and also the fashion of the moment, while a huge gold watch chain, to which was attached a bunch of heavy and handsome seals, gave the final touch to a get-up which was nothing if not confidence-inspiring. The man looked both shrewd and honest, particularly the former; Vernon felt every moment more and more eagerly interested as to the reason of his presence in the village.
“You know that we parsons are privileged impertinents?” began Vernon, after a short pause.
“Yes,” answered the stranger promptly.
“Perhaps you know too that I have been until to-day ‘deputy shepherd’ here at Rishton?”
“I know that too,” admitted the other.
“Then perhaps you will let me ask if you are the new tenant of Church Cottage?”
“Well, there’s nothing gained or lost by admitting that I am; and further, I don’t mind telling you that I’d as soon the cottage were a little further off the church. One can’t expect to live in the odor of sanctity for nothing, and with a parson living next door, and religious consolation therefore always turned on, I shall feel, so to speak, always under the tap.”
“You needn’t be afraid of that with my brother,” said Vernon, smiling. “I suppose there never was a man with less professional cant about him. He’ll talk to a neighbor about his fruit trees, his pigs, his poultry, and everything that is his, but never a word of religion, unless the subject is introduced by somebody else.”
“I see; won’t give professional advice for nothing? Well, I respect him for it; there’s no good in making your wares too cheap. Guess your brother and me’ll get along.”
What could the work be which brought this keen-eyed, prosperous-looking colonist—for a colonist it was not difficult to guess that he must be—to a sleepy little hole like Rishton, where the commerce was restricted to the weekly buying and selling in Matherham market, and to the still humbler traffic in the small wares of half a dozen puny village shops? Vernon was shy of asking him point-blank the nature of his work; indeed, something in the stranger’s manner intimated pretty plainly that he would not have given the required information. And no hints sufficed to draw him out. The vicar of St. Cuthbert’s made one such attempt, which failed most signally.
“You will find also,” said he, “that my brother is a practical man, and any help that he can give you in the work you speak of he will offer most willingly, I know.”
But to this speech the first reply of the colonist was a sardonic laugh.
“I daresay he will,” said he, drily, when his hard merriment had suddenly ceased. “For the matter of that, a man with a serious object before him, who has his head screwed on the right way, can get help of some sort from everybody he comes nigh to. And so, Mr. Brander, I make no doubt I shall get assistance in my work, not only from your brother, but from yourself.”
And with these words, uttered in a tone of some significance, he turned on his heel with an abrupt nod, and made his way with characteristically heavy and deliberate steps towards the gate of the cottage.
Vernon Brander watched the solidly-built figure disappearing in the dusk, and then proceeded on his way down the hill in some agitation of spirit. The shadow of the old crime was creeping up again; the tragedy which ten years had not lived down was reappearing with a new and ghastly vividness in the presence of that matter-of-fact stranger. Who he might be Vernon could scarcely guess; what the nature of his work was in a quiet village flashed upon him with an intuition which left no room for doubt. The feelings produced by this thought were not all gloomy; a certain hungry look, which betokened perhaps that even open shame would be welcome after ten years of silent ignominy, burned in the clergyman’s dark eyes as he lifted his head and gazed into the blue-black night sky above him with a piercing intentness which seemed to be trying to fathom the mysteries of the future.
On reaching the bottom of the hill, he was startled out of his reverie by a bright girl’s voice and a gentle touch on his arm. He stopped short and lowered his head dreamily, almost inclined to think, in the high state of excitement to which he had been worked, that the sweet voice, the kindly touch, were a prophecy of happiness rather than the commonplace incident of an every-day greeting. The next moment, however, he came fully to himself, and found that he was in the presence, not only of Olivia Denison, but of her father.
“Mr. Brander, come down from the clouds if you please, and leave your next Sunday’s sermon to take care of itself for a little while. I want to introduce you to my father.”
Mr. Denison, a tall, strikingly handsome man of about fifty years of age, with a gentle, kindly face entirely destitute of any trace of his daughter’s energy and impulsive frankness, held out his hand with a very willing smile.
“I am very happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Brander, and to be able to thank you for your great kindness to my little daughter here.”
He patted Olivia’s shoulder affectionately, but it seemed to the clergyman, as he looked from the one face to the other, that the action was scarcely typical of the mutual relations between gentle, vacillating father and quick-witted, active daughter.
“Miss Denison is so much more valiant and self-helpful than most young ladies that she spurs one up to do more for her than one would for others,” said Vernon.
“Yet this afternoon you would not allow that I could help papa,” put in Olivia, reproachfully.
“Didn’t I rather suggest that the help you really gave was of a different kind from what you imagined?”
“She gives me help of all kinds,” said her father affectionately.
“She’s my clerk and my comforter; and I think if the farm-hands struck work, she’d take to the plough as naturally as she’s taken to the poultry.”
“Well, I’d certainly try my hand at it,” said the girl laughing. “I suppose the chief qualifications are a steady hand and a correct eye, and both those I’ve acquired at billiards.”
“My dear Olivia, you mustn’t own to playing billiards before a clergyman!”
“And why not, Mr. Denison?” asked Vernon. “I love a good game of billiards myself; and the strongest reasons that keep me out of old Williams’s billiard-room up at the Manor Hall are old Williams’ inability to play a decent game, and his son’s inability to make a decent remark.”
Olivia gave an exclamation of disgust at this passing allusion to her importunate admirer: Mr. Denison seemed relieved by the clergyman’s admission.
“I’ve not come much in contact with gentlemen of your calling,” said he; “and I have rather a feeling that I must be on my best behavior before them.”
“A very proper feeling, and one that I wish you could communicate to some of the gentlemen engaged in mining occupations among my parishioners. It’s a much healthier symptom than throwing bricks.”
“Do they throw bricks at you?” asked Olivia, indignantly.
“Not so many as they used to do,” said Vernon, with a twinkle in his eye, which was, however, not discernible in the increasing darkness. “I found a way to cure them of that.”
“What was that?”
“I threw them back.”
Mr. Denison did not attempt to disguise the fact that his respect for and appreciation of the Church were rising rapidly. It was with a cordiality very different from the formal gratitude he had shown at the outset that he presently begged the clergyman to do himself and his wife the pleasure of lunching with them on the following or an early day.
“I am very anxious to introduce you to my wife,” said he. “She used to try hard to get me to receive what I irreverently called her ‘pet parsons;’ but I had heard them preach, and that was enough for me. Now you see I can bring forward a candidate of my own.”
“That’s unfortunate, because I can’t come to-morrow; and next day is Sunday. And perhaps, if you hear me preach, you may want to retract your invitation.”
“Well, we must chance that,” said Mr. Denison, smiling. “But I can trust a par—no, I mean a clergyman, who knows something about the tables of slate as well as the tables of stone. Remember, we are only poor farmer folk now; the glory of Streatham has departed. But we shall make you heartily welcome; and you must forgive the absence of champagne. Now, what day will you come?”
“May I say this day week?” said Vernon, after considering a moment. “For the next few days I have work to do a long way off which will make any sort of meal an impossibility. I shall live upon bread and coaldust; and you must not be surprised if I turn up with a complexion of Othello, and with a little of his savagery, after a week’s intercourse with the blackest and roughest race in Yorkshire.”
The following Friday was, therefore, fixed upon as the day on which the Rev. Vernon Brander was to make formal acquaintance with Rishton Hall Farm and its new masters. And, with a mutual liking which opened a pleasant prospect of future acquaintance, the two gentlemen bade each other good-night, and separated.
But, if they had only known it, there was a very strong woman’s will working against any such happy consummation. Mrs. Meredith Brander, for reasons of her own, had conceived the intention of doing what she could to form an impassable bridge between her brother-in-law and the household at Rishton Hall Farm. She shrewdly guessed that her best chance lay through the step-mother; but for a day or two she took no active steps, contenting herself with gleaning all the information she could concerning the character and habits of each member of the Denison family. Mr. Denison, she decided, was not of much account; Mrs. Denison, a vain, half-educated woman, exalted above her natural station, ought, with judicious treatment, to be easy to deal with. It was with the handsome, high-spirited Olivia herself that the difficulty lay, and Mrs. Brander felt that she must proceed with caution.
In the meantime, the new inmate of the cottage was exciting much general interest, and some suspicion. He lived entirely by himself, but for such companionship as was afforded him by Mrs. Wall, during the two or three hours a day when she jogged slowly through his apartments with a broom and a pail, and generally “did for” him. He drove such a hard bargain with this lady, and lived so simply, that the belief soon spread among the villagers that he was very poor, that his big watch chain was brass, and that his solid manner and imperative speech were mere empty “swagger.”
The Reverend Meredith Brander was shrewd enough to think differently. There was a weight and solidity about the speech and manner of the new comer which it is not given to the mere waifs and strays of the earth to acquire. When he passed an opinion, which was seldom, for he was apparently of reticent disposition, it was with the evident belief, not only that it was worth listening to, but that it would be listened to. The vicar tried hard, in every decent and graceful way, to win from him some information as to who he was and what he did there; but his geniality and his personal charm had no perceptible effect on the stranger, who kept even his name a secret, and steadily declined Mr. Brander’s invitations to him to dine at the Vicarage, or to play a game of chess with him in the evenings.
“I’m sure you must find it dull alone in the cottage at night,” the vicar would say to him cheerily; “for one can see with half an eye that you’ve been used to an active life, with lots of movement and all sorts of society. Why don’t you let yourself be persuaded into sitting by a warm hearth instead of a cold one, with a woman and children about you? All globe-trotters love the atmosphere of women and children.”
“I can bear with ’em, but I’m not excited about either species,” the stranger answered one day to his neighbor’s persuasions. “I’ve had a wife and children myself; but I’m bound to say I get on quite as comfortably without them.”
If this unorthodox speech was meant to shock the vicar, it failed of its effect; for Meredith Brander had no Puritanical horror of human frailties and eccentricities, but a cheery belief that they gave a healthy outlet to the dangerous humors of the world.
He discussed the new comer with his wife, who, however, took scarcely enough interest in the subject to set her feminine wits to work towards solving the mystery which hung about him.
“I don’t know why you make so much fuss about him,” she said rather contemptuously one day, when her husband had been recounting his fruitless efforts to induce the stranger to dine with them. “And I am sure I am thankful that he had the sense not to come. To judge by his manners he has been a navvy, who went gold-digging and picked up a nugget; and to judge by his coming here and the way he lives, the nugget was somebody else’s, and he has to live perdu until the little affair has blown over.”
The vicar made no reply to this; but there was evidently nothing convincing to him in his wife’s contempt for the stranger. When he spoke again, it was upon a fresh subject.
“Vernon’s getting very thick with the new people at the Hall Farm. I met him to-day arm-in-arm with papa, and I hear that he’s going to dine with them next Friday. Now, papa is a very amiable man, though he may not be over-endowed with brains; but I suppose it is not far-fetched to imagine that there may be another attraction.”
Mr. Brander spoke in his usual light and genial tones, without even the touch of seriousness he had shown when treating of this same subject with his brother. But the effect of his words on his wife was instant and strong. The lines of her handsome mouth grew straight and hard, her low, handsome forehead puckered with an anxious frown as she said sharply—
“He must be stopped.”
The vicar, raising his eyebrows blandly, stroked his chin, and looked out of the window.
“Yes, my dear, I admit that it would be very much for the best if he could be stopped; but the question is, how is it to be done? All we can do is to persuade, exhort, advise. And haven’t we done it—perhaps even overdone it? If Vernon takes it seriously into his head that he will marry, why, marry he will; and I don’t see how all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, can prevent him.”
“Perhaps not,” said his wife, icily. “But I can.”
Her mouth, which was Mrs. Brander’s most eloquent feature, closed with almost a snap, and strongly suggested the idea that her interest in her brother-in-law’s matrimonial inclinations was not purely benevolent.
“Well, my dear, there is no denying that it would be for the best if you could prevent this rather foolish flirtation with a particularly headstrong girl from coming to anything. One can scarcely think that this type of girl, for all her beauty and high spirit I think we must allow her, would make him happy as a wife.”
“I hadn’t thought of the matter from that point of view,” said his wife drily.
The vicar glanced rather uneasily at his wife, whose habit of looking at things from a purely matter-of-fact and practical point of view sometimes jarred upon his more easy-going nature.
He rose from his seat, and prepared to leave the room.
“But you should, my dear; you should,” he said in a gently reproachful tone, as he came to the back of her chair and, gently stroking her dark hair with his plump white hand, printed an affectionate kiss on the smooth white forehead, from which the frown had scarcely yet departed.
As soon as her husband had left the room, Mrs. Brander gave herself up to resolute consideration of a difficult and delicate plan of action. After some time she came to a decision, and her face cleared.
“To-day is Wednesday,” she said to herself, glancing at an almanac on her writing-table. “This dinner, or luncheon, or whatever it is, is not till Friday. Then I have to-morrow to work in.”
And she rose with a sigh of relief, and went about her household duties with a lighter heart, feeling that she had provided for the fulfilment of a very disagreeable task in a rather able manner.
On the following afternoon Mrs. Brander, after a short drive in the neighborhood, drove her little ponies up to the door of Rishton Hall Farm to make her first call upon Mrs. Denison. The latter lady had already expressed some indignation that the vicar’s wife had not called upon her before, and had even announced her intention of being “not at home” to Mrs. Brander, to show her sense of the folly of such airs in a woman who ought, by virtue of her husband’s office, to be the humblest in the parish. However, what happened when the smart-looking little pony carriage drew up at the door was this: the farmer’s wife, after peeping through the dining-room curtains, in a flutter of excitement, rushed across the hall to the drawing-room, with a hoarse whisper of directions to the approaching housemaid, and greeted the visitor, on her entrance, with a mixture of dignity and effusiveness, which the vicar’s wife met with her usual, straightforward, matter-of-fact simplicity of manner. Mrs. Brander had brought her ten-year-old daughter with her, less for companionship than for the reason, which she would at once frankly have owned, that the child’s fragile fairness formed an admirable compliment to her own brunette beauty. The child also served to make the introduction of the two ladies less formal, as her presence resulted in Mrs. Denison sending for her own two spoilt children, whom Mrs. Brander greeted courteously, but without effusiveness. Indeed, she afterwards described them as the two most intolerable little offences against humanity she had ever met, and she was much too frank to do more than veil this feeling even in the presence of their mother, whose caresses of the little Kate and compliments on her beauty evidently excited in the more sensible of the two mothers no approval whatever.
The vicar’s wife had something in her mind that she considered of far more importance than any matter connected with mere children. Before very long she brought the conversation round to Olivia Denison, of whom she took care to speak with such exceedingly moderate approbation as she thought likely to suit a step-mother’s taste. Mrs. Denison was delighted to meet some one who did not go into the usual raptures about the young girl’s beauty and amiability.
“Olivia is not a bad sort of girl,” she admitted, in a patronizing tone. “But she has been terribly spoilt by her father. Her temper is almost unbearable, and I regret to say that she does not scruple to indulge it on my poor children.”
“I should think you would be glad to get her married and settled, both for her sake and your own, then,” said Mrs. Brander. “She is a showy sort of girl, who ought to marry even here.”
Mrs. Denison looked for a moment rather embarrassed.
“Well, certainly,” she admitted grudgingly. “A gentleman has already made his appearance who seems to be attracted by her—at least, so her father thinks. I myself shall not see him till to-morrow, when he comes to luncheon here.”
“Indeed!” cried Mrs. Brander, raising her eyebrows with great apparent interest. “I wonder if it is any one I know?” Mrs. Denison gave a little cough of uncertainty.
“Well,” she said at last, with some hesitation, “I hope I’m not letting out a secret, but it is your own brother-in-law, Mr. Vernon Brander.”
Mrs. Brander almost started from her chair in well simulated horror and surprise.
“Vernon!” she exclaimed, in a low voice. “Impossible!” Mrs. Denison turned pale.
“Why not?” she faltered. “Surely there is nothing against the vicar’s brother!”
Mrs. Brander hesitated, in much apparent confusion and distress.
“I would not for the world have been the first to break it to you, and even now I scarcely like to tell you. In fact, I will not unless you will promise that it shall make no difference in your treatment of the unhappy young fellow,” she said at last.
Mrs. Denison, shaking with curiosity and alarm, gave the required promise in an unconvincing tone.
“Years ago,” began the vicar’s wife in a tone lowered to escape the children’s ears, “Vernon unhappily became involved in an intrigue with the sister of the man who occupied this house, and at last, after a quarrel, she mysteriously disappeared, and has not since been heard of.”
“Murdered!” shrieked Mrs. Denison, startling the children, who all turned round, and caused her to put sudden constraint upon herself.
“Hush!” said Mrs. Brander, rather alarmed by the strength of her effect. “We don’t like to think that; we mustn’t think that. But there is just enough unpleasantness about the affair. You understand,” she murmured confidentially.
“I should think so!” cried Mrs. Denison, heartily. “I’ll take care that he shall never——”
The vicar’s wife interrupted her, laying a persuasive, but not feeble, hand on the arm of the excited lady.
“You will take care never to hint a word of this to him, or to any one,” she said, in a low, but exceedingly authoritative, tone. “You remember your promise. Without any measure so strong as that, we women always know how to give an acquaintance who is in any way undesirable not too much cold shoulder, but just cold shoulder enough.”
She rose to go, feeling that she had done enough to accomplish her purpose.
“I think that ought to do it,” she said to herself, with subdued and still somewhat anxious satisfaction, as she whipped up her ponies, and drove away from the farm.